


lost stars

by seeingstardust (hyliaslight)



Series: darling we walk the centuries [1]
Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Angst, Grief/Mourning, Hurt/Comfort, POV Female Character, POV First Person, Post-Time War (Doctor Who)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-21
Updated: 2019-09-30
Packaged: 2020-10-25 01:43:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,190
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20716034
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hyliaslight/pseuds/seeingstardust
Summary: After the Time War, the TARDIS takes the Doctor to an old friend.





	1. Chapter 1

The niggling feeling that something was wrong began when the Doctor didn’t pop out of the TARDIS the moment it appeared in my backyard. This wasn’t entirely out of the ordinary, as he did sometimes expect me to simply hop in and be ready to go. But for some reason it felt different this time. I picked my way over to the blue box that had become so familiar to me over the last three years and tried opening the door.

It was locked.

“Doctor?” I called, knocking. “It’s Kenzie! Are you gonna let me in or what?”

There was still no sign of him, and a cold feeling crept up my spine, because I knew that there was no reason for him not to hear me. For one thing, those doors weren’t exactly perfectly soundproof—and with her telepathic abilities I was sure the TARDIS could choose to broadcast sound more or less depending on the necessity.

Still, I knocked a second time and called out even louder. Just in case.

After a moment of silence I was forced to accept that the Doctor wasn’t going to come out. I bit my lip worriedly. “Let me in, Blue,” I said softly. My hand pressed against the ship’s exterior that seemed so much like ordinary wood but was really so much more. “Please.”

Almost before I’d finished speaking, the door clicked open. With a grateful sigh I pushed my way into the console room.

“Oh,” I breathed, stopping short as the new look of the interior registered. The walls were warmly colored, the pillars surrounding the console sort of coral-y looking, and a contrasting teal light shone out of the time rotor. No more arm chairs in the console room, it seemed, and though the new setup seemed cozy enough, the kinds of things that tended to prompt redecorating the TARDIS were usually—not nice things. “Oh, boy.”

A hallway off to the side lit up invitingly, pulling me back on track. I set off down it unquestioningly, knowing that the ship would lead me where I needed to go. She loved her pilot just as much as I did, after all.

It wasn’t a very long or winding walk, like you could sometimes get when the TARDIS wasn’t feeling especially helpful, before I ended up outside what could only be the Doctor’s bedroom. I blinked at the circular Gallifreyan nameplate and the smaller plate below it that read _The Doctor_ in English, or at least a language actually translatable by the TARDIS.

Though I knew the Doctor had to have a room because he had to sleep at some point, it was not a room I had ever seen before. It definitely would have been the last place I’d ever look for him.

I knocked softly and after a moment of internal debate let myself in. The man sitting on the bed staring at his hands wore a different face than the one I’d expected to see, and my heart sank all the way down to my toes.

Similar to the new look of the console room, if there was anything I’d learned from knowing multiple versions of the Doctor, it was that anything that could make him regenerate had to have been bad. I drew closer slowly, licking my lips as I tried to figure out how to approach this.

At last I knelt in front of him so I could look up into his face, my hands coming to rest over his. They were trembling minutely.

“Doctor,” I said gently. He didn’t look at me. “What happened?”

There was a long stretch of silence. I waited as patiently as I could, knowing that it would be a bad idea to push. At last, he opened his mouth and croaked, “They’re gone.”

I didn’t understand who he meant, but from the absolutely wrecked sound of his voice I realized that whatever happened was even worse than I thought. Just how long, I had to wonder, had it actually been since we last saw each other? I had a terrible, sneaking suspicion that it was much longer for him than the few weeks it had been for me—maybe even much longer than a few years.

Just what exactly had he been through in that time?

“They’re all gone. Even the planet,” he continued on. At last he met my gaze, and my breath hitched when his eyes were revealed to me. They were a deep blue-gray, roiling like a storm, and more aged, more _haunted_, than I had ever seen them before.

“Doctor—“

“All that’s left is me. I’m the last one.”

I stopped short, mouth still slightly open from my previous attempt to speak. The enormity of his words was hard to fully comprehend. Could he really have just said what I thought he’d said?

I hadn’t exactly met many of them, and I was sure the Doctor was one of a kind, but from the way he talked about them the Time Lords had seemed so...everlasting. Too powerful, too distant to be wiped out so fully. It was a terrifying thought.

And they had been his _people_. His home and his family.

“Oh, sweetheart,” I breathed at last, barely noticing the new endearment as it came out of my mouth; I was too busy pulling myself up so I could sit beside him and throw my arms around his neck.

The Doctor froze for a moment, almost a flinch, and I worried I shouldn’t have touched him so suddenly or without asking permission—but then he melted into the hug, squeezing me back so tightly I half thought my bones would start to creak. I could feel tears dripping onto my shoulder from where his face was pressed into my skin.

“I’m so sorry,” I whispered to him, feeling tears of my own prick at my eyes. It seemed like such a small, meaningless comfort, but I couldn’t think of anything else to say. No string of words could wipe away the depth of his loss, nor capture everything I wanted him to know; that I was there for him, that I couldn’t ever fully understand his pain but I still hurt because _he_ was hurting.

And so much more that I couldn’t put into words inside my own head, let alone out loud. Even if I could, I doubted those were the things he needed to hear right now, after such devastation.

“It’s my fault,” he said into my neck. His voice cracked, and he shuddered in my arms. “I killed them.”

I stilled, suddenly breathless. “What?”

“There was a war. Bigger than you can ever imagine,” he murmured, sounding pained and far away. Trapped in his own head. “The Time Lords and the Daleks, but so many others, too, forced into the crossfire. The Last Great Time War, they called it.”

The Doctor pulled away from me and dropped his head into his hands. This time I didn’t try to touch him. I wasn’t entirely sure if it was because I knew he needed some space or because I knew _I_ needed some space, to listen and make sense of what I was hearing. After a long moment, he finally looked up and met my eyes.

“It was going to destroy the universe,” he said plainly. “They weren’t going to stop until everything died. I had to end it.”

There was a tinge of desperation to the words, as if he was trying to convince me—or, more likely, convince himself—of the necessity. I stared at him, unable to fathom the extremes that could have led him to such a drastic and final measure. For as long as I had known him he had never been a man of violence, and neither did he like to see people die when he could have done something to prevent it.

I knew that causing so much death would be the last thing he would ever choose to do, that he must have had no other choice. But knowing that and reconciling it with the destruction of an entire planet and people were two different things.

We looked at each other for a very, very long time. Emotions warred in those new eyes of his, guilt and grief and a profound sense of horror. And I realized then that whatever I thought this war—the Time War—was, the reality must have been so many thousands of times worse.

I placed my hand on his knee. Somehow, in that moment, that simple, silent touch meant far more than a whole embrace or sentimental speech could convey. Those could come later.

For now, it was just us there, in the silence of sorrow. A burden shared.


	2. Chapter 2

I spent the entirety of the next two days with the Doctor. Despite my best efforts I fell asleep on him more than once, each time waking up more worried for him. I was sure that he wasn’t sleeping, and though he didn’t necessarily need much, I had already begun to wonder when it was he last had. The TARDIS never moved from my backyard, and I texted my family to let them know that it would likely be there for awhile.

The third day was a Monday, and I wavered over what to do. Should I call in sick to work? Should I say there was a death in the family, ask for a few days? I didn’t think that just a few more days would give me the confidence to leave the Doctor alone with this. When it got unbearably close to the time I would have to leave if I wanted to make it to the office on time, I steeled myself and broke the silence that had largely taken over.

“Doctor,” I broached the subject hesitantly. “I have work today, but I can take the day off. Do you want me to stay?”

For a moment he didn’t react. Then he let out a slow breath, shaking his head. “Go on, then,” he said. “I’ll be alright.”

I wasn’t too sure. But he was older than I would ever be, and maybe I just had to trust that he would tell me if he needed me. I nodded and pulled him in for a short, heartfelt hug before excusing myself to get dressed and go.

And just like that, three days turned into three weeks, and three weeks turned into six. Whenever I walked into the TARDIS I would find the Doctor tinkering with things that likely didn’t really need fixing, or wandering through the ship like a ghost. We ate together, things that were easy to cook or ready made meals from some century beyond my own. I even drove back from work for lunch every day, more grateful than ever that I’d snagged an internship at a company only ten minutes from home. I worried that he wouldn’t be eating regularly otherwise—god knows he could forget to eat when things were as normal as they could get for him, when he _wasn’t_ devastated by guilt and trauma and loss.

I tried not to be too distracted at work, but that was probably a pipe dream from the start. Even with the time I did have to spend with him, between eight hour days and needing a human amount of sleep, I didn’t know how to help him. I worried that I wasn’t doing enough; I worried that anything I tried would end up being too much, too soon. Many a Google search told me that I was supposed to let him grieve in his own way and on his own timetable.

_Well_, I thought more than once, that’s all well and good for people in normal circumstances, but the Doctor’s situation was so horribly unique. There was so much guilt and regret wrapped up in his grief and it was on such a massive, unimaginable scale that internet articles seemed too small and constrained to be any use.

After all, how was he ever going to _let_ himself heal after what he’d had to do? It was all he could think about. He never said, but I knew, because it was all _I_ could think about.

I needed to do _something_.

My internship finally ended on a humid August Friday, more than two whole months after the TARDIS first materialized in my yard. That Sunday I found the Doctor once again tinkering with something or other on the console. For a moment I just watched him silently, trying to figure out how to approach this.

“Take me somewhere,” I just blurted out eventually.

The Doctor stilled, his face still turned towards whatever he was working on. Away from me. “Pardon?” he asked.

“Let’s go somewhere,” I said, deciding to just plow ahead now that there was no turning back. “Like, um, the moon? I’ve never been to the moon. I bet the moon is nice.”

He looked up, a furrow in his brow. “Don’t you have work in the morning?”

I blinked. “No, um, I finished up on Friday,” I explained. “Sorry, I thought I told you…” There was a slightly awkward pause before I added, “Also, we’re in a time machine.”

“Ah,” he said. “Right.”

“So, the moon?” I asked hopefully. At the noncommittal sound he made I hastily amended, “Or anywhere, really, if you don’t feel like the moon. Just one trip, though? And then we can come back here and, and watch a movie or something. You can lecture me on TARDIS maintenance while I pretend to understand what you’re saying.”

Miraculously, that seemed to get the barest hint of a smile out of him. “Hm. Alright, then. Suppose we’re overdue for the moon,” he agreed, almost business-like, and the sudden change in his demeanor was like flicking a light switch. I blinked, thrown, and barely grabbed on to the console in time to avoid being _literally_ thrown as he set about flying the TARDIS.

It was a short trip, probably because the moon was so close to where we were compared to all the other places he could have taken me. Once the TARDIS stilled, he gestured for me to open the doors. I flashed him a grateful smile and stepped outside.

“Oh, wow,” I breathed. There it was. My planet, my home. All blue and green and swirling white, turning slowly against the backdrop of space. Seeing it was somehow more incredible than I thought it would be; it was one thing to look at a photograph or an illustration of a view like this, and another entirely to actually be standing there, on the moon, high above the Earth.

The Doctor had taken me to so many wonderful places with spectacularly beautiful skies and landscapes—but there was something incredibly special about standing on the very moon that I looked up at every night, looking down at my own world, my home. There had to be hundreds of people on the surface watching the sky at this very moment. Wishing on stars and greeting the moon. I felt so incredibly awed by the chance to be here on the other side.

The door clicked shut behind me as I continued to take in the sight before me, bringing me back to the moment enough to remember why I had asked for this particular destination in the first place. I glanced back to find the Doctor carrying a blanket out of the TARDIS, spreading it out in front of the ship for us to sit on. As we settled down together I noted the conflicted look on his face, the mix of melancholy and wonder. I admired that about him, that he could still be effected deeply by the things he saw and experienced. I just wished that it didn’t have to hurt him so much as well.

We sat in silence for a long time, looking out over the Earth as it continued to turn.

“You said that the Time War would have destroyed the universe,” I said at last.

“…yes,” he said, his voice carefully controlled. Blank, but it had to be tearing him up inside.

“But it didn’t. Because you ended it.”

He didn’t respond. I turned to look at him, at the way he watched the planet as it went on and on, and took his hand. I gave him a few moments before trying again.

“Doctor,” I said gently. He met my eyes, though it seemed with great difficulty. “You had to make an impossible choice. An incredible sacrifice. But because of that sacrifice, everything else is still here.”

The words could have sounded callous, dismissive, but instead they were as sincere, as truthful as i could make them. What I was attempting to convey was not supposed to be tiptoeing or coddling, but neither was it meant to be cruel.

“I can’t tell you whether it was right or wrong, and I can’t forgive you for it,” I continued on, stroking my thumb over his hand to try to soften the blow as much as I could, “because I’m not the one you want or need forgiveness from. But look at where we are.”

The dusty silver surface of the moon stretched out before us, and beyond that the Earth, and beyond that the endless expanse of stars and planets and everything else. The sight of it would probably be enough to make me breathless with awe at every glance, under normal circumstances. Right now, though, I needed all the breath I could get to say what I wanted to say.

“That planet is full of people who are living complicated, ordinary, amazing lives, and there are so many more worlds out there that can say the same,” I said, squeezing his hand in both of mine. “Gallifrey shouldn’t have had to pay the price for it. But you and the TARDIS are still here too, and do you know what that means?”

The depth of feeling in the lines of his face was almost painful to see, the grief and the guilt and the self-loathing that ate away at him constantly. He closed his eyes against the tide of it, but I wouldn’t have been surprised if it did little to help.

I hoped desperately that i could reach him with this. That in some way my words could help him where he could not do it himself, even if it was only the smallest bit.

“It means that there is someone in this universe that can tell their story,” I said softly. I heard his breath hitch. “It means that you can help the rest of us remember them, and keep them alive in the ways that we can.”

A beat passed, and then two. Having said my piece, I settled once more and allowed the quiet to swell back into place. The only sound came from the gentle humming of the TARDIS behind us as we watched over the Earth and the sky and the stars.

Only time would tell whether he’d ever be able to be okay again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> full disclosure i don't know what the hell i'm talking about ever but especially when it comes to grief or trauma which i think is reflected pretty well here. i'm gonna mark this as complete for now because i have a few ideas of what happens after this but i haven't decided whether i'll add them as new chapters or post them as a separate work in the series

**Author's Note:**

> Welp. This is self indulgence in the extreme. I'm writing this series all out of order, but the outcome of the Time War marks a big change in Doctor Who and the beginning of a big change in the relationship between the Doctor and Kenzie, so it felt pretty important to get down.
> 
> For those of you who have read the first chapter of starlight in her wake, I promise I'm working on that too! It's way more difficult for me to write things all in order :P


End file.
